Prosser Finds Thousands of New Votes, Recount Likely

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The election for Wisconsin Supreme Court became a whole lot murkier on Thursday when David Prosser gained 7,582 votes in Waukesha County due to a major error by County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus. The amount, if verified, would hand Prosser the victory.

The error was discovered just shortly after Prosser announced he was bringing on the legal brains behind Bush v. Gore to steer his recount efforts.

Nickolaus is no stranger to election controversy, and already her process for ensuring transparent and fair elections is under close scrutiny. In this case Nickolaus had all the election data collection and storage removed from county computers and transfered to computers accessible only in her office. Nickolaus claims this was all done for security purposes.

In response to the news JoAnne Kloppenburg’s campaign manager announced the campaign was filing an open records request for all relevant documents related to the election results in Waukesha County.

A recount could be requested as early as next week, but must wait for county canvassers to provide the official vote tally.

Given the smelly nature of the gain for Prosser, legitimate or not, I think it’s a safe bet that Kloppenburg will seek that recount.

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115 comments

After every election in the United States of America, there are revelations of how deceased people are able to vote and even pets have the ability to voice their opinion on who is elected. Isn't this a wonderful country where practially everyone get their say?

The people have spoken now for a second time against the growth in power and control of the public unions. How many itme are they going to have to vote n this before you realize that this IS the mandate of the people in Wisconsin, regrdless of what you or the MSM say. AND, this was after a HUGE push by unions to get out the vote. Even that wasn't enough. Times are changing, but the public unions, actually unions in general, the Democrats who feed at the union trough, and the MSM who are either clueless or being bought off, just won't let it go. They are too concerned about their personal gains in power and control. They don't care about the people, the actual union worker, or any taxpaying citizen, they are just using them, us, for their own gain, politically and financially. Worse part is, we ALL lose when they win.

Not only is this whole thing as smelly as three day old fish, it is just as nauseating. What we are fighting for is honesty and transparency in government. Just when did it happen that the American people began to have to fight against our own governments for these two values? The last time I truly felt this country was united under the President and its government was during the Kennedy era. It's been along slippery slope since then: LBJ lining his own pockets with proceeds from no-bid contracts in the Viet Nam war; Tricky Dick we need not even dignify by discussing; Bushes Uno y Duo made it clear the government was for sale to the highest bidder ... and guess what? The American people, the people who keep the factories and corporations running, got sold down the river long, long ago. I feel another American revolution coming.

Patricia P.: Votes are not OFFICIALLY over until election results are formally certified by the county election officials to the state election authorities. I'm not even sure that has happened YET. I don't think that the final OFFICIAL vote totals are even available from the canvassers yet. Informal vote totals reported verbally or on tally sheets to the county clerk's office do NOT constitute the end of the election process. You're very much jumping the gun. The election is over where the state election authority (I don't know just who has that constitutional responsibility in Wisconsin ... in a lot of states it is the Secretary of State when statewide offices are involved) verifies the statewide results after receiving formal reports of the final totals from the clerks in ALL of the counties in the entire state.

This became crucial, as you may remember, in the 1960 Presidential race in Illinois, where there was a very long delay in reporting results out of Cook County.

If she has not already done so, the Waukesha COunty Clerk should publicly release to complete vote totals FOR EACH PRECINCT that made up her first erroneous report to press sources side by side with the revised numbers for those same precincts that are going into her final tally. That will make it absolutely clear whether or not the Brookfield votes really WERE omitted from the original tally. Additionally, poll workers in the OTHER precincts would still have a pretty good general idea of what the vote tallys were in their respective polling places, so they would be able to point out if the numbers reported as "released to the press" contained any obvious lowering of THIER vote totals in order to "make room" for those extra votes from Brookfield to be "discovered" later.

I don't know if Waukesha County actually uses voting technology (accounted-for paper ballots or machines that issue security-encrypted voter receipts so that the totals cannot be tampered with later), but if they do a recount in that county might shed some light on that matter.

In any event, I would suggest that interested parties file any legal challenges at the earliest possible moment, so as to preserve physical evidence wherever possible AND obtain authority (if available under Wisconsin law) to get sworn statements from relevant election officials at the precinct and county levels. Memories fade fast, and things tend to get "misplaced" or "erased accidentally" in such cases.

John, how do you know the votes are legitimate? The election was officially over with all districts reporting by the day after the election, and then the next day 7000 votes magically appear? Nothing traceable due to a "software glictch"? Come on! I can see why conservatives are so obsessed with election fraud since they do it so often themselves - Bush in 2000, Ohio in 2004 and 2008, and now this.
If anybody's "extremist" and "radical" it's the corporations and billionaires like the Koches who want to turn this county into a banana republic with a few obscenely rich people and everyone else poor. What about corporate thugs who crash the economy and profit from it, outsource jobs, and when they can't outsource jobs insource immigrants all in an effort to drive down wages and destroy the middle class. CEOs now make 500-1700 times what their workers make (in 1970 CEOs made 42 times what their workers made). The top 20% of the population has 95% of the wealth, and much of that is held by the top 1%. The bottom 80% of the population has 5% of the national wealth. This is what 30 years of conservative government has wrought.